KOLD-TV
KOLD-TV is a full-service TV station in Tucson, Arizona. It's the CBS affiliate in Tucson, Arizona & is owned by Raycom Media. The station broadcasts in analog on VHF ch. 13 & in DT on UHF ch. 32. History On November 13 1952, the FCC granted a construction permit for a TV station to broadcast on VHF ch. 13. 2 months later, on January 13 1953, Tucson's first TV station went on the air with the call letters KOPO-TV. Known as "Lucky 13", KOPO played up the "13" angle, coming on the air @ 1:13:13 PM, the 13th second of the 13th minute of the 13th hour of the 13th day of the year. It was sister station to KOPO-AM in Tucson & like it's radio partner, a CBS affiliate. KOPO-TV also had a secondary DuMont affiliation. It was initially owned by country singer Gene Autry, who also owned Phoenix station KOOL-TV. In 1957, the station changed it's call letters to KOLD-TV, playing off it's sister TV station in Phoenix. KOOL & KOLD remained sister stations until Autry sold off KOLD in 1969. KOLD's eventual buyer, Universal Communications (a subsidiary of the Detroit Evening News Association), merged with Gannett in 1986. However, due to it's ownership of the Tucson Citizen, a newspaper in Pensacola & a competing TV station in Oklahoma City, Gannett spun off KOLD along with Oklahoma City's KTVY (now KFOR-TV) & Mobile's WALA-TV to Knight Ridder Broadcasting after just 1 day of ownership. The News-Press & Gazette Company acquired KOLD in 1989, when Knight Ridder bowed out of broadcasting. In 1993, New Vision Television (the 1st one; the company restructured with smaller-market stations after the Ellis deal) bought KOLD from NPG. 2 years later, New Vision I sold all of it's stations to Ellis Communications, which in turn was sold in 1996 to a media group funded by the Retirement Systems of Alabama, who merged the Ellis group with Aflac's broadcasting unit to form Raycom Media. Raycom continues to own the station today. DTV On April 3 1997, the FCC released it's initial DTV companion channel assignments. They assigned UHF ch. 32 to KOLD-TV to build it's DTV facilities. KOLD received a construction permit to build the new facilities on May 12, 2000 & on September 11 2003, began broadcasting in DT. The DT station was licensed on January 6, 2004. KOLD has elected ch. 32 as it's final DT ch., meaning that on February 17 2009, @ the end of the DT transition, KOLD will surrender it's license for ch. 13 & continue broadcasting in DT on ch. 32, although, per FCC regulations, it will continued to be identified as ch. 13 on TV set tuners. While KOLD's analog station originates from the electronics site in the Tucson Mountains west of downtown, KOLD's digital transmitter is @ the Mount Bigelow electronics site to the northeast of the city. The station's digital channel is multiplexed: In 2009, KOLD-TV will return to ch. 13 when the analog to DT conversion is complete. News Department On-Air Talent News Anchors *'Jenny Anchondo' - weekday mornings *'Mindy Blake' - weekdays @ noon & 5 PM *'Barbara Grijalva' - weekdays @ noon *'Scott Kilbury' - weekday mornings *'Teresa Jun' - Saturday & Sunday @ 5:30 & 10 PM *'Dan Marries' - weekdays @ 5, 6 & 10 PM *'Heather Rowe' - weekdays @ 6 & 10 PM *'Mark Stine' - Sunday @ 5:30 & 10 PM Reporters *'Suleika Acosta' *'Lauren Burgoyne' *'Jim Becker' *'Dee Cortez' - traffic *'Bud Foster' - politics *'Barbara Grijalva' *'Teresa Jun' *'Som Lisaius' - crime *'Mark Stine' *'J.D. Wallace' Weather *'Chuck George' - chief meteorologist; weekdays @ 5, 6 & 10 PM *'Erin Jordan' - weekday mornings & @ noon *'Aaron Pickering' - weekends @ 5:30 & 10 PM Sports *'Damien Alameda' - sports director *'Dave Cooney' - weekend sports anchor/reporter *'Eric Villalobos' - part-time sports anchor/reporter KOLD in fiction 2 Nickelodeon shows have used the KOLD call letters for fictional radio stations. A Bikini Bottom version of KOLD is heard in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode Mid-Life Crustacean & on the 1st-season Rugrats episodes "Baseball" & "No Bones About It", Grandpa Lou listens to KOLD, "Music for the old & the old-@-heart". In Tom Clancy's 1991 book The Sum Of All Fears, KOLD-TV is an independent superstation in Denver, Colorado that breaks the 1st video footage of a terrorist nuclear detonation @ the Super Bowl, after the sitting President orders FBI agents to muzzle the major network news operations. External links *KOLD News 13's Website